New York Times A hacking free-for-all has exploded on the Web, and Facebook and Twitter are stuck in the middle. On Wednesday, anonymous hackers took aim at companies perceived to have harmed WikiLeaks after its release of a flood of confidential diplomatic documents. MasterCard,Visa and PayPal, which had cut off people’s ability to donate money to WikiLeaks, were hit by attacks that tried to block access to the companies’ Web sites and services. To organize their efforts, the hackers have turned to sites like Facebook and Twitter. That has drawn these Web giants into the fray and created a precarious situation for them.

… the problem came into relief on Wednesday, through an effort called Operation Payback, organized by a group calling itself Anonymous. The group spent much of the day posting notes on Facebook and Twitter that told followers which companies to single out and that documented hacking successes. But Facebook banned one of the group’s pages, saying that using the site to organize hacking attacks like that violated its terms of use. The group went on Twitter to complain. A Facebook spokesman issued a statement saying that the company was “sensitive to content that includes pornography, bullying, hate speech, and threats of violence” and would “take action on content that we find or that’s reported to us that promotes unlawful activity.” Facebook generally resists requests by governments or advocacy groups to take down material if that content is not illegal or does not violate Facebook’s terms of service, which prohibit attacks on individuals or incitements to violence. “Facebook is a place where people come to talk about all sorts of things, including controversial topics,” Mr. Sullivan said. It was not clear whether anyone had asked Facebook to take down the Operation Payback page. Twitter allowed the Operation Payback account to stay active most of Wednesday. But the group’s account was disabled late in the day, after it posted a link to a file that provided thousands of consumer credit card numbers, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation. A Twitter spokesman declined to discuss the details of the situation. “We don’t comment about the specific actions we take around user accounts,” he said. The company is not overly concerned about hackers’ attacking Twitter’s site, he said, explaining that it faces security issues all the time and has technology to deal with the situation. Twitter is in a particularly delicate situation because its founders have celebrated their service’s role in political protest and free speech. They have not been shy about trying to capitalize on the good will engendered by playing that role. WikiLeaks’s own Twitter account remains active, and it is the group’s main channel for reaching supporters and the media.

Reuters LONDON – The website attacks launched by supporters of WikiLeaks show 21st-century cyber warfare evolving into a more amateur and anarchic affair than many predicted. While most countries have plowed much more attention and resources into cyber security in recent years, most of the debate has focused on the threat from militant groups such as al Qaeda or mainstream state on state conflict. But attempts to silence WikiLeaks after the leaking of some 250,000 classified State Department cables seem to have produced something rather different — something of a popular rebellion amongst hundreds or thousands of tech-savvy activists. Online collective Anonymous appears to be using social networking site Twitter to coordinate attacks on websites belonging to entities it views as trying to silence WikiLeaks. Targets have included MasterCard, Visa and a Swiss bank. All blocked payments to Wikileaks on apparent U.S. pressure.

pandalabs.pandasecurity.com/tis-the-season-of-ddos-wikileaks-editio/ The organizers behind the anonymous group responsible for Operation:Payback are in the midst of refocusing their campaign to assist WikiLeaks in their quest to release classified government documents. The following statement was made available on their website late Sunday afternoon … According to our stats, ThePayPalBlog.com has been down as of 4AM PST on 12/4/2010 and shows no sign of coming back online anytime soon. After nearly 7 hours of constant attacks, the PayPal blog has either been deleted or permanently taken offline. Accessing the blog this morning revealed the following 403/access forbidden error. ThePayPalBlog.com is now back up after 75 service interruptions and 8 hours 15 minutes of total downtime. This report doesn’t take into account the many hours that ThePayPalBlog.com resolved to a 403 error… Anonymous attacked postfinance.ch well into last night, with16 hours and 30 minutes of recorded downtime. The chat room currently has over 900 people joining in on the attack, as well as over 500 computers involved in their voluntary DDoS botnet (LOIC HIVEMIND)… A small group of Anonymous protesters (not everyone) have started attacking Sarah Palin’s website (sarahpac.com) in retaliation for stating that Assange should be hunted like a terrorist. We have observed 256 service interruptions and 94 hours of combined downtime since these attacks started on December 4th…The Internet hosting provider (space2u.com) of the Lawyer representing the 2 girls who were allegedly raped/assaulted by Julian Assange has voluntarily suspended the ADVBYRA.SE website indefinitely…A small group of Anonymous protesters (not everyone) have started attacking Sarah Palin’s website (sarahpac.com) in retaliation for stating that Assange should be hunted like a terrorist…

MasterCard.com first went down at 1:14 AM PST with 4 service interruptions and is currently experiencing 1 hour+ of ongoing downtime… Mastercard.com is still down with 940 computers in the voluntary botnet attacking the site all at once. We have 3 hours 57 minutes of recorded downtime so far…Mastercard.com is still selected as the main target and has not came back online since our last report. 7 hours of downtime and counting… Mastercard.com still under attack with 11 hours of downtime and counting, but the target will change to Visa.com at 1 PM PST…This is the first time that the group officially targets Visa.com, but we have already observed 106 service interruptions and over 12 hours of downtime for Visa since we started monitoring yesterday at 9PM. The amount of participants in the attackers chat room have soared to over 2200 people and there are currently over 1,700 computers in the voluntary botnet…Operation Payback has selected PayPal as a target again…

www.pp-international.net/ Pirate Parties from around the world, including the Pirate Parties International members from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Russia, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Serbia reaffirmed their commitment to whistleblowing worldwide. Concerned about freedom of information, opinion and press, the Pirate Parties have decided in a joint resolution to make Wikileaks available on a worldwide distributed mirroring infrastructure. facebook.com/piratepartyukpirate-party.us

anonymouse.org/ Every time you visit a site for a piece of cheese, you leave a calling card that reveals where you are coming from, what kind of computer you use, and other details. And many cats keep logs of all your visits, so that they can catch you! This service allows you to surf the web without revealing any personal information. It is fast, it is easy, and it is free!

techtree.com/India/News/The_Anonymous_Targets_WikiLeakss_EnemiesAnonymous, a collective consciousness of the anti-corporate, anti-government online anarchists loosely based around the 4chan forums, has taken it upon itself to check this campaign against freedom of speech in the form of an all out Internet war against all those who have harmed WikiLeaks. Anonymous has been known to lead successful online as well as offline protests against Iranian Elections, Australian censorship, The Church of Scientology, and the subversive YouTube porn day attacks. The Internet activists consisting of computer professionals and determined hackers launched DDOS attacks on Amazon.com, Visa, Mastercard and PayPal websites; either temporarily shutting down the websites or slowing them down considerably. They also targeted the websites of Swedish prosecutor’s office and the lawyer representing the two women whose allegations of sexual misconduct are the basis of Sweden’s extradition bid. There are also rumours of the possibility of hackers launching attacks against the two Swedish women that have accused Assange in a sexual abuse case, which is widely considered to be frivolous in nature.